New Bedford superintendent search receives 35 applications

NEW BEDFORD — Thirty-five people submitted applications by Wednesday's deadline to become the next school superintendent in New Bedford, according to a search committee official.

CHARIS ANDERSON

NEW BEDFORD — Thirty-five people submitted applications by Wednesday's deadline to become the next school superintendent in New Bedford, according to a search committee official.

It is possible the candidate pool may grow by an additional few people if applications come through the mail over the next few days, said Richard Warren, a senior search consultant with Future Management Systems Inc., a firm that is helping the district with the search.

"In today's market, that's a good pool," said Warren in an interview after the meeting.

Warren reviewed the next steps in the search process with the city's Superintendent Search Committee on Wednesday night.

The seven members of that committee will review the applications over the next week, and then will meet again Jan. 24 to decide which applicants to bring in for initial interviews in early February.

The committee will then present a group of finalists — likely three candidates — to the School Committee in early February.

The finalists are tentatively scheduled to be in the district Feb. 25-27. During those visits, finalists will spend a full day in the community, visiting schools and meeting with various focus groups, among other things.

"You need to keep this moving. This is prime time," said Warren, who said New Bedford could be competing against other districts for top candidates.

"We want to get this done by early March," he said.

Dr. Lawrence Finnerty, the School Committee's representative on the search committee, questioned what the search committee should do if candidates it had advanced withdrew from the process: Should the committee backfill with other candidates, he asked.

Warren said it was unlikely that candidates would withdraw during the initial interview stage of the process but that sometimes finalists do withdraw, depending on whether they are finalists in other search processes.

Dana Mohler-Faria, chairman of the search committee and president of Bridgewater State University, emphasized that the role of the committee was to advance only those candidates it feels could do the job and do it well.

"Obviously, for us, the bottom line is we only need one candidate; that's what we need," said Mohler-Faria. "And that needs to be a top-notch person."

Mohler-Faria and other committee members said leadership ability was one of the most important characteristics they would be looking for throughout the process.

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